Shofar FTP Archive File: camps/aktion.reinhard/yvs16.01

Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Yad Vashem Studies XVI: Operation Reinhard (1/11)
Summary: Background & Introduction
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project - http://www.nizkor.org
Keywords: Yad Vashem,treblinka,sobibor,belzec
X-Diesel: http://www.nizkor.org/features/denial-of-science/diesel-1.html
X-FAQ: http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/reinhard/
X-Reinhard: http://www.nizkor.org/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/aktion.reinhard
Archive/File: orgs/israeli/yad-vashem/yvs16.01
Last-modified: 1993/03/29
XRef: yad_vashem index
YAD VASHEM STUDIES
XVI
Edited by Aharon Weiss
YAD VASHEM
MARTYR'S AND HEROES' REMEMBRANCE AUTHORITY
JERUSALEM 1984
"Operation Reinhard":
Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka
Yitzhak Arad
SOON AFTER THE task forces had began their campaign of extermination
in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union, the deputy of the Governor
General Hans Frank, Secretary of State Dr. Bu"hler, remarked at the
Wannsee Conference
...that the General Government would welcome it if a start were to
be made on the final solution of this question in the General
Government, because here transportation does not pose a real
problem nor would the deployment of a labor force interfere with
the process of this operation Jews should be removed from the area
of the General Government as quickly as possible, because it is
here that the Jew represents a serious danger as a carrier of
epidemics, and in addition his incessant black marketeering
constantly upsets the country's economic structure. Of the
approximately 2.5 million Jews in question, the majority are
anyway unfit for work.
Secretary of State Dr. Bu"hler furthermore stated that the
solution of the Jewish question in the General Government is under
the control of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD and
that his activities are supported by the authorities in the
General Government. He [Bu"hler] has only one request: that the
Jewish question in this region be solved as quickly as possible.
(The so-called "Wannsee Protokoll," original in the Archives of
the Foreign Office, Bonn.)
Dr. Bu"hler's request was given a positive response. The General
Government consisted of the districts of Warsaw, Cracow, Lublin,
Radom, and Lvov. According to the estimate of the German
authorities, they were inhabited by approximately 2,284,000 Jews. A
special organization was set up in Lublin to prepare for their
extermination. The actual killing was to be carried out in three
death camps -- Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, at the eastern border
of the General Government.
The geographical location of the extermination sites also served as a
pretext for the claim that the Jews were to be deported to ghettos in
the East. Their disappearance could thus be explained in terms of
their transportation to labor camps in the huge areas then occupied
by the German armed forces in the Soviet Union.
SS-Brigadefu"hrer Otto Globocnik was entrusted with conducting
Operation Reinhard -- named after Reinhard Heydrich who had been
assassinated on May 2, 1942. In this office he was Himmler's
immediate subordinate; as the commandant of SS and Police in the
Lublin district he was subordinate to the Supreme SS- and
Polizeifu"hrer of the General Government, Obergruppenfu"hrer
Friedrich Kruger.
The principal tasks of Globocnik and his staff in Operation Reinhard
were: the overall planning of the deportations and of the
extermination operations; the construction of extermination camps; to
coordinate the deportation of Jews from the different administrative
districts to the extermination camps; the killing of the Jews in the
camps; to secure their belongings and valuables and transfer them to
the appropriate German authority.
Headquarters of Operation Reinhard was responsible for coordinating
the timing of the transports with the absorption capacity of the
camps.
The organization and supervision of the respective transports from
the entire area of the General Government and later on also from
other European countries was the task of the RSHA and its departments
as well as of the supreme commandant of the SS and Police and his
subordinate departments.
To date no written orders by Himmler to Globocnik concerning
Operation Reinhard have been discovered. A reason for this may be
that either Himmler issued no written statement on this subject, or
that any orders and directives were destroyed. (Nuremberg Document
4024-PS .)

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